Upper Calf Creek Falls Secret Route

Upper Calf Creek is a spectacular slickrock basin carved in the Navajo Sandstone. Although the route from Highway 12 to Upper Calf Creek Falls is popular hike, our secret route will provide solitude with beautiful landforms, waterpockets and microcosmic desert gardens. Natural springs provide perennial water to Calf Creek with lovely waterfalls and plunge pools. Bring a swim suit if you want to enjoy a very cool refreshing dip in the pools.  Water in the desert was also a gift to prehistoric man who carved petroglyphs and painted pictographs on the walls of a cool cave where they once lived. Cowboy glyphs orniment the outside of the cave.  Ironstone concretions that have weathered out of the sandstone have really weird shapes – we like to pretend that they are scatter wreckage of prehistoric spaceship crash sites. To top it off, we will explore a very deep and magical slot canyon that provides cool shade on a hot afternoon and is the nest site for a raven family.  This place has so much to offer!